While not a prolific novelist, Charles Frazier has become renowned for his eloquently told stories, complex characters, and universal themes of love, longing, and searching for a place in the world. Firmly grounded in their time and place, he skillfully captures the landscapes and mindset of 19th-century America, with evocative details of the mountains, farmland, and frontier wilderness of rural North Carolina and its inhabitants' rough, melodic speech. The tone of his fiction ranges from wryly humorous to haunting and melancholy as he traces his protagonists' physical and inner journeys. Start with: Cold Mountain

While not a prolific novelist, Charles Frazier has become renowned for his eloquently told stories, complex characters, and universal themes of love, longing, and searching for a place in the world. Firmly grounded in their time and place, he skillfully captures the landscapes and mindset of 19th-century America, with evocative details of the mountains, farmland, and frontier wilderness of rural North Carolina and its inhabitants' rough, melodic speech. The tone of his fiction ranges from wryly humorous to haunting and melancholy as he traces his protagonists' physical and inner journeys. Start with: Cold Mountain